Between the world wars, unemployment spread throughout the industrialized world like a disease. Focusing on the United States, Britain, and Europe, Matt Perrry compares and contrasts popular attitudes and the government response toward unemployment.

Looking beyond statistics and economic cycles, Perry investigates the human impact of unemployment. He uncovers the experience of being jobless from the perspective of those who lived through it, their employers and their communities. He uses oral history, memoirs, literary accounts, and newspaper articles to reveal the reality of unemployment.

Perry argues that the scale of the crisis has been minimized by historians
who have tended to emphasize that prolonged unemployment was the problem of the distressed fringe.

Finally, Perry argues that the lessons of the 1930s have direct relevance today since the structural problems of industrial capitalism remain inherent.